Russian Retribution

Updated Feb. 27, 2008 12:01 am ET

Lev Ponomarev is a well-known Russian human-rights activist. So you can guess where this story is going.

On Friday, Mr. Ponomarev, a former aide to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and a colleague of opposition leader Garry Kasparov, was charged with criminally "slandering" General Yuri Kalinin, who runs Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service. Mr. Ponomarev has been calling attention to the often brutish treatment of prisoners in Russia's roughly 700 penal colonies, some 50 of which have acquired reputations as "torture...